


Old Friends Found Again

by softmoonlight



Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order (Video Game), Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Childhood Friends, Comfortember, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Episode: s01e15 Fire Across the Galaxy, Rescue, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:47:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27564763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight
Summary: Kanan finds someone he'd long presumed dead.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Cal Kestis, Ezra Bridger & Kanan Jarrus, Kanan Jarrus & Cal Kestis, can be seen as Kanan Jarrus/Cal Kestis
Series: Whumptober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952500
Comments: 22
Kudos: 187
Collections: Comfortember 2020, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020





	Old Friends Found Again

**Author's Note:**

> late in both the whumptober and comfortember cases but who cares.
> 
> whumptober prompt fill: day 6 - no more  
> comfortember prompt fill: day 1 - rescue
> 
> ETA: added on Cal/Kanan tag bc I made it but then didn’t write anything for it but realized this could count if you squint. My rarepair heart can’t help it (but then again it can be entirely platonic too)

The cell level stank of stale air and grime, as though no fresh air had been allowed in for ages, but Kanan could feel a faint presence all the same. Alive, but incredibly disoriented—perhaps drugged, perhaps dying.

Kanan wondered at them still being alive at all. The Grand Inquisitor died weeks ago; they should be long dead. The staff must have been under orders to maintain upkeep, for some reason.

Why they would even bother remained another question entirely. This being the Inquisitor’s prison suggested a Jedi or strong untrained Force-sensitive, but the presence was too muted to tell for sure.

And regardless, Kanan didn’t dare let himself hope that foolishly anymore. Not after Master Luminara. For all he knew, this was just another version of that trap.

“Kanan…?” Ezra whispered behind him, shifting on his feet. “Who’s in there?”

He approached the door cautiously, fingering his lightsaber but not igniting it yet. “Don’t know, but we’re about to find out. Be ready. Remember, the intel has them as a high-priority prisoner, so they could be dangerous.”

Kanan felt more than saw Ezra nod.

Then that creative monstrosity of a lightsaber hummed to life excitedly to match its master, bathing them in blinding blue light that overwhelmed the senses in this pitch-black darkness.

He groaned, shielding his eyes with the back of his hand. “Ezra! I never said turn—”

“What?” Ezra blinked back innocently, unaffected by the look Kanan shot him. “You said be ready. _This_ is ready.”

A low, pitiful noise from inside the cell derailed his incoming lecture about _semantics_ and _you know exactly what I meant so stop pretending otherwise_. It was probably best to have the light source anyway.

Kanan examined the keypad nearby. It was a surprisingly simple lock. He shut his eyes and swiped his fingers through the air, imagining the inner mechanism gently yielding to his suggestion.

It beeped, and the door slid open with a quiet hiss.

Ezra bounded into the cell eagerly, waving his lightsaber around like a glowrod but without any finesse. Kanan didn’t bother reprimanding him, instead deciding to look for the actual lights to render his behavior moot. He found another keypad on the inside of the door and flicked everything on, glancing over to where the noise had come from.

The source—a person dressed in dirty Imperial-issue prisoner garb and curled over fetal-position on the floor—flinched bodily away from the sudden brightness, moaning again.

Ezra froze, nose wrinkled at the smell and unintentionally broadcasting his guilt that he felt that way. When this was all over, they definitely had to talk about behavior around prisoners…

Kanan stepped past him, briefly placing a hand on Ezra’s shoulder, and fell to his knees beside the shaking form. His fingers scrambled at the thin, sweaty clothing. Even if this person might otherwise be a threat, he had no qualms letting his guard down at the moment given how weakened they clearly were.

He finally managed to turn the person over onto their back, though the surprisingly strong resistance meant he had to do so by practically pulling them into his arms, one wrapped under the shoulders to hold him in place.

His eyes tracked over them Force-fast: a human male, close to Kanan’s own age, with pale (if unclean) skin and hair that looked brown, but whose roots suggested was actually a shade of red underneath all the dirt. Feverish, emaciated, and radiating unfortunately familiar echoes of pain that he knew were from the aftermath of torture. In this case, most likely long-term, prolonged torture.

_Definitely_ Force-sensitive. He even recognized the presence, though it had been so long that placing him eluded Kanan’s desperate wracking of his memories.

This was someone he once knew as a boy. This was someone that had survived like him.

“No! No…more…” the man whispered, trying and failing to jerk out of Kanan’s grasp. “Can’t… _won’t_ tell…”

“It’s alright,” Kanan said, tentatively reaching out to brush the man’s brow with his free hand, gentle in a way he knew from experience the Inquisitor never would be, even as a taunt. “He’s gone now.”

The man shuddered, and Kanan could sense his disbelief in those words despite hearing their truth—clearly, his reality had been tampered with so thoroughly that he no longer trusted his own abilities—but his fight tapered away after another few moments. He went slack under Kanan’s hand, and green eyes fluttered open to meet his.

The moment their gazes locked, he knew.

_Running in the Temple, laughing, younglings look out, I’m going to be a padawan before you, oh yeah I bet you think that, the war’s bad but at least we have each other and—_

He shut down the onslaught of memories, trying not to overwhelm Cal—because it was _unmistakably_ Cal, how had he not realized immediately, what was wrong with him?—but also to keep his own riot of emotions from spiraling.

Kanan simply _stared_ back, his body tingling with a strange sense of numb unreality. This was something so much harder to grasp than Ahsoka—someone whom he’d known before the purge, yes, but not beyond some occasional sparring in the Temple during their teenage years.

Cal was only slightly younger than him, and they’d been raised together their entire childhoods. They were in the same initiate clan.

This was perhaps his closest childhood friend, and Kanan could feel his heartbeat because _he was alive._

“Cal?” he breathed.

Cal’s eyes darted between his, more lucid than before, and he pushed weakly into Kanan’s chest, trying to sit up. Kanan helped him to his feet, but he left a steadying hand on his back just in case.

When he looked back, Cal was frowning, visibly warring with the same instinctive denial after years of believing the other dead, but unable to dispute the truth of the presence in front of him.

“…Caleb?”

Kanan scratched the back of his head. “It’s me, but—”

“ _Caleb_ ,” Cal whimpered, louder, lip trembling, sounding like a young child rather than a twentysomething-year-old man.

He lunged forward and slammed into Kanan with such force that he staggered. Arms were around him, squeezing tighter than he would have ever thought any human capable of.

Kanan finally registered the surprise that had been coming off Ezra for some time, but he couldn’t make himself open his eyes, so immersing was the sensation of finding someone again.

For a moment, he felt like Caleb Dume hugging his friend still at the Temple when he and Depa returned for leave. For a moment it felt like nothing at all had changed in the fifteen years since.

“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re _alive_ …” Cal’s chanting in his ear sounded like a prayer.

“—it’s Kanan, now,” he finished with small laugh. “But it’s nice to see you too, buddy.”

Biggest understatement of his entire life, but he couldn’t find the right words.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Ezra that broke the moment. Sabine’s tinny voice crackled through their comms, heavy with exert. “ _I don’t know what you guys are doing down there, but hurry up, we’ve got company! Time to go_!”

They drew apart reluctantly, but once again Kanan kept a grip on Cal, holding him up, one arm draped around his shoulders and bearing the brunt of his alarmingly light weight. They turned to Ezra, who was staring at Kanan like he’d never seen him before. His gaze shifted to Cal, nervous but as always thrumming with an undercurrent of excitement.

Kanan almost felt bad for the incoming interrogation Cal was about to endure.

“Cal, this is my padawan, Ezra. Ezra, this is Cal Kestis. We knew each other as kids. Before the purge.”

Cal blinked at the word “padawan”, raising his eyebrows at Kanan, who scowled. But he accepted it otherwise, even waving and smiling in that boyishly charming way that he clearly hadn’t shaken even in adulthood. “Nice to meet you.”

Ezra waved back shyly. “Hi.”

Kanan indicated the two of them. “Want to help with Cal, or go first and clear the hall?”

Ezra’s eyes lit up. It was a long-standing point of contention between them that Kanan rarely let Ezra be first to deal with the ’troopers unless absolutely necessary. He was already racing toward the door. “’bye!” he called back, not even bothering to glance over his shoulder.

Kanan shook his head. “That damn kid…”

“You’re close,” Cal observed quietly. Kanan nodded, and Cal sighed. “I—well, I had opportunities, but I never dared let a kid get too close enough to train them. Too scared, I think. It’s good that you’re not.”

“I was,” he confessed. “I was so much, at first. Still am, really. But he didn’t have anyone else. He would’ve been alone.”

Cal glanced around as Kanan helped him stumble over the threshold, unsure about his first steps outside his cell in what must have been forever. “Just like we were.”

“Just like we were,” he confirmed, squeezing Cal’s hand slightly. “But not anymore. We’re building something now.”

They stumbled along in silence for a moment, listening to the sounds of blasterfire and general chaos in silence.

“There’s so much I have to tell you,” Kanan murmured quietly. About Depa and Kasmir and meeting Hera and picking up Zeb, Sabine, and Ezra, and about Lothal and Master Yoda...now wasn’t the time, but the fact that he even got to do so at all was...everything.

“Me too.”

And as they escaped, Kanan wondered what his friend’s adventures all these years had been.

**Author's Note:**

> btw Cal and Kanan knowing each other as kids is a headcanon (although a very reasonable one given their ages) but the thing about Ahsoka and Kanan knowing each other in passing was confirmed by Filoni a few years ago


End file.
